I was speaking earlier with someone about finding what I’m passionate about.
If you’ve read my blog much, you’ll know that, for me, life is all about living with empathy and intentionality.
Based on our conversation, they suggested that my core value is inclusion.
I sat with that for a while.
On the surface, all signs pointed to that being the obvious answer. And yet…
Something kept niggling at the back of my brain.
I do highly value inclusion and try to live every aspect of my life in an inclusive way.
But inclusivity still leaves out one important piece.
The most inclusive people in the world will eventually stop including someone who continually hurts them.
Including me.
I learned years ago that sometimes you have to love yourself enough to love people from afar.
So, inclusivity is important…
But it’s not the top of the pyramid.
So what is?
I thought about it for a while.
Two girls from my past kept coming to mind. For the sake of the now-innocent, I’ve changed their names. 😂
Let’s call the first girl Sarah.
I met Sarah in fifth grade when I wound up in New Jersey.
Sarah…was a fucking c-u-n-yaknow.
She bullied the SHIT out of me. Up to and including the seventh-grade Halloween dance.
I had made a court jester costume.
She waited until there was a lull in the music and said, as loudly as possible,
“Nice costume, Sheri. Your mom make it in prison?”
I never forgot that moment.
SEARED into my mind.
I despised Sarah.
Until…
Around the time we were thirty, Sarah reached out to apologize.
Life had humbled her. She had learned what cruelty felt like.
For the past seventeen years, she’s been one of my biggest champions.
Then there was Maggie.
I met Maggie in seventh grade.
Not surprisingly, she was friends with Sarah. 😂
She made my life a living hell until I moved away after tenth grade.
When I moved back at twenty, she’d become best friends with my brother.
She was still a raging bitch.
One night we were both at my brother’s house and someone mentioned Punky Brewster.
I laughed because that’s been a lifelong nickname.
“Yeah…people have often stopped me to ask who I look like. I always ask if they mean Cindy Crawford.”
(Obviously a joke.)
In comes Maggie.
“You know you don’t look like that, right? Like Cindy Crawford? She’s beautiful and you’re…you…”
She trailed off with a look of complete disgust.
God…
I fucking hated Maggie.
Then fate got weird.
We turned twenty-one on the same day.
My brother told me he’d be at the bar with Maggie and, if I wanted to see him, I’d have to come there.
Fine.
I walked in and…
Everyone was there for me.
Not in a conceited way.
In a logical way.
Chris’s friends knew both of us.
My friends only knew me.
Every time one of my friends came over to buy me a birthday shot, I’d smile and say,
“Oh my God, thank you! By the way…have you met Maggie? It’s her twenty-first birthday too.”
Because I wasn’t the only one who deserved to feel like I belonged that night.
By the end of the evening…
She was the one holding my hair while everyone else came to check on me.
😂
After that, she became one of my biggest champions too.
Until the day she passed away.
Those stories aren’t about me being awesome.
Honestly, I’m never proud when I can truthfully say I despise someone.
Not exactly my best quality.
They also showed me that inclusivity wasn’t quite the right answer.
If someone had asked me beforehand whether I wanted Maggie at my birthday celebration…
The answer would’ve been an enthusiastic “Hell no.”
But when the moment actually came…
Both Sarah and Maggie gave me the same choice.
I could cling to a very well-earned bias…
Or I could offer a moment of grace.
And maybe that’s what really matters to me.
One moment.
One experience.
One intentional,
“I see you.”
One small act of kindness…
Can alter the trajectory of a person’s life.
That’s what matters to me.
That, when I have the opportunity to choose grace…
I do.
At that point, the person I was talking with smiled and said,
“I don’t think your highest value is inclusion.
I think it’s redemption.”
That one…
That one feels right.
*Jazz Hands* Mom 